The Twine Loft – March 2021
Passed On: Michael Drake – Fortune, N.L. fisherman
Drake, 48, passed away tragically on December 15, 2020. He was crewmember on the scallop dragger Chief William Saulis that went down in the Bay of Fundy.
Passed On: Henry Vokey – Trinity, N.L. boatbuilder
Vokey, 91, passed away on January 27 at home surrounded by his family. He was born in Little Harbour, Trinity Bay on October 6, 1929. He started boatbuilding at a young age, the start of a lifelong passion. At the age of ...
Positive Impact of New Technology on North Atlantic Cod Fishery
More than ever, our groundfish industry needs to evaluate strategies to maximize the value it receives from a limited Northern cod resource with the goal of providing timely and high-quality product to the market.
The latest Fisheries and Oceans stock assessment indicates Northern cod (Gadus morhua) stocks in NAFO Divisions 2J3KL have declined recently and at a recent Canadian Centre for Fisheries Innovation (CCFI) workshop, it was also suggested that a significant commercial fishery is ...
N.L. Cod – What we Heard
The Canadian Centre for Fisheries Innovation hosted a very successful conference on the theme Cod – Building the Fishery of the Future in Gander on November 28 and 29.
It was attended by about 180 people, representing a good cross-section of the industry, including harvesters, processors, marketers, suppliers, government and academia.
Because of the many different interest groups in the room, there was a lot of potential for disagreement on various issues. However, the session was ably ...
Changing Supply
Last month in this column, I talked about changing markets and provided some examples of how the U.S. market for fish products had changed over a 20-year period.
This month, I will focus on how the supply of fish has changed in recent decades.
Markets have two sides — demand and supply. Markets are primarily about the demand side — purchasing and consumption — because that is the reason there is a supply. Without buyers, there would be no suppliers. As I have said before in this ...
Working Together
Using Indigenous and Local Knowledge and Science to Better Manage Capelin
By Chelsea Boaler, Ph.D. Student
Marine Institute of Memorial University of Newfoundland
Centre for Fisheries Ecosystem Research
Capelin (Mallotus villosus) is a prominent pelagic forage fish species for piscivorous predators in North Atlantic and Arctic waters.
It is not only a central food source in marine ecosystems, but also holds important subsistence and commercial value for people. Despite the ecological ...
Citizen Science Pilot Cod Project
Citizen scientists count.
The phrase citizen science may be new to you, but it is an old practice. Before the 20th century, science was done by “gentleman” scientists who worked independently such as Benjamin Franklin, Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.
The phrase “Citizen Scientist” was only added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2014 and it’s defined as “scientific work undertaken by members of the general public, often in collaboration with or under the direction of ...
Quantity Versus Value
For the most part, we live in a world where many resources are in short supply relative to human needs and wants.
Since 1950, the world’s population has increased three-fold, from 2.5 billion to 7.6 billion this year, creating new demand for just about everything. To keep up with that growing demand, we have been extracting increasing quantities of the world’s resources — and producing a lot of waste products along the way.
That is one of the major drivers of the climate change that ...
In A Holding Position — Michael Crockwell
If you were looking to anchor your boat in the Bronze Age, from 3300 to 2100 B.C., you’d tie a rope around a heavy rock and throw it overboard.
These primitive anchors got a little more sophisticated with the addition of grooves and sticks and the killick was born. Gaelic for anchor, killicks were still being used in Newfoundland and Labrador in the last century.
The word anchor itself is so old that it’s derived from not only a Latin word “ancora” but a Greek word before that. In ...
Is Lobster Larvae Decline a Factor in Whale Deaths?
Editor’s Note: This is Alain’s final contribution to The Navigator Magazine. Our long-time, revered, Nova Scotia fisheries contributor passed away on August 5 in Yarmouth. He will be missed, not only by the readers of this publication, but by the fishing industry as a whole.
Marine scientists now believe the lack of lobster postlarvae is the culprit behind the right whales vacating their feeding grounds at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy and migrating to the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
...
Organization and Lobbyists Could Be Solution to Industry Woes
When the late U.S. President Lyndon Johnson appointed a person into his inner circle, who at times had publicly disagreed with his policies, he justified his decision by saying he’d rather have the guy inside the tent peeing out than outside the tent peeing in.
When it comes to having any influence with governments, especially Ottawa concerning the commercial fishery, hiring lobbyists is the solution because the opposition is doing so and with results.
Three worried lobster harvesters ...
